Tonight (Oct. 5), the Echo Park-based arts organization Machine Project hosts a performance/conversation In Our Sights, an experiment in "pushing the documentary form into a more personal and intimate space." The project, spearheaded by curator Arjuna Neuman (Art MFA 11), kicks off at 8 pm (with ongoing performances).

The piece—which explores the "global cult of technology/war"—is part performance, part conversation and part installation that experiments with the delivery of information in a way that is less mediated than in a traditional documentary film.

Machine Project has been converted into a version of the Wendover, Utah, training facility, where bombardiers trained to drop the atomic bombs on Japan during World War II. Bombsights cut into the floor allow visitors to view slide-projected images in the basement below. At the same time, CalArts School of Art faculty member Andrew Freeman and artist Gabie Strong will facilitate conversations and re-tell stories about the "contradictions inherent to the armed forces as the last national socialized collective."

More from the curator:

In Our Sights borrows from the oral tradition, and invites the audience into an installation where artists will perform memories and engage with you in conversations. So that you become as much a part of the re-telling of this story as the story itself....

This training facility was also training the world to see and experience differently, it prepared us without us knowing, for a new subjectivity. The immaculate conception of the nuclear bomb, with its Trinity test and press conferences in Japan, ushered in the era of the radioactive sublime. Soon we would all become disciples of technology as an ideology, [the only] theology left to believe in.

Archives

24700 is CalArts' online space dedicated to sharing news and work of the larger CalArts community from around the world. The blog captures stories of the exploration of new forms and expressions in the arts by our students, faculty, staff and alumni.